Poll: Media right to publish on NSA

Americans believe the media outlets that published Edward Snowden’s leaks about national surveillance programs were in the right to do so, a new poll finds.

Asked if the newspapers were right or wrong to publish the information once they got it, 59 percent of respondents said The Washington Post and The Guardian were right, and 33 percent said wrong, according to a Gallup Poll on Wednesday.

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Respondents were more evenly divided over whether Snowden was right to leak the information, with 44 percent saying he was and 42 percent saying he wasn’t. Republicans and independents were slightly more supportive, while Democrats were less.

Overall, Americans disapproved of the programs described in the leak, 53 percent disapproving to 37 percent approving.

The phone poll of 1,008 adults was conducted June 10-11 and has an error margin of plus-minus 4 percentage points.

Meanwhile, a separate poll released Thursday also found the public to be generally supportive of Snowden.

A TIME poll found that 54 percent of respondents said Snowden “did a good thing” to release the information, while 30 percent disagreed. Still, 53 percent of those questioned said the government should prosecute leakers.

Fifty-five percent of those asked also said they were aware the government was conducting surveillance of phone calls, emails and Internet searches before the reports, compared with 45 percent who said they were unaware.

TIME surveyed 805 adults from June 10-11 and the results have an error margin of plus-minus 3 percentage points.